


Human Nature

by TheManyFacesofJester



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), James Bond (Movies)
Genre: Augment AU, M/M, Near Future, Robot AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-14
Updated: 2017-01-14
Packaged: 2018-09-17 08:58:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 20,864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9314561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheManyFacesofJester/pseuds/TheManyFacesofJester
Summary: At a time when augmentations and artificial intelligence are under scrutiny after a series of disasters James Bond finds himself getting closer and closer to the artificial voice in his ear as that voice becomes more and more sentient everyday





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> My prompt for this 00QRBB was [](http://s1043.photobucket.com/user/TheManyFacesofJester/media/Augments_zpsappkvof7.jpg.html)Augments by [LilyEssence](http://archiveofourown.org/users/LilyEssence/profile)  
> I'm so excited to finally be able to share this! I love doing this every year and this year was no exception. Special thanks to my artist who did a fabulous job and was super cool in our emails! Enjoy!

“The door’s locked!” Bond shouted to an empty room

“Yes, I noticed. I’m unlocking it right now,” a soft voice hummed into Bond’s ear.

“Anytime you feel like opening it would be perfect,” he scoffed in return. Above his head Bond could hear footsteps heading towards the staircase. Someone knew he was here, and he wasn’t exactly planning on hanging around any longer than he had to.

“I have to decode the lock settings. I’m AI, not magic.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Well, artificial intelligence is-”

“Q, I know the difference! That was a rhetorical question!” Bond sighed as he pulled out his gun and began shooting at the lock.

“Ah, I see, you were just being facetious.”

“The lock, Q!”

“Oh, right, well, if you’d checked the lock before shooting it, you absolute heathen, you would have noticed that I’d already unlocked it.” Bond was absolutely unclear why his Person Artificial Intelligence had been coded with so much personality, but it was certainly a refreshing change from the irritating voice of the old Quartermaster sighing into his ear.

As Bond swung the door open several armed men came crashing down the stairs with a hail of gunfire.

“Don’t shoot, just run!” Q shouted, omnipotently aware that Bond was reaching for his gun. The MI6 agent complied with that request and bolted through the door, which he heard lock behind him.

“How’d you know I was reaching for my gun?” Bond asked through breathes as he ran through an underground labyrinth of sorts. “There aren’t any cameras down here.”

“Because you always choose shooting over running, it’s a pattern with you!”

“What, have you got a special part of your memory dedicated to tracking my behavioral patterns?”

“Yes,” Q said casually, and Bond had to laugh.

“Anything else you’ve noticed that I should be made aware of?”

“Well, you tend to waste energy by talking while you’re running.”

Bond laughed and continued running until he came to a latter.

“That leads up to the middle of a busy street, it won’t be safe to go through right now. Let me see if I can find an alternate exit-”

“Don’t bother,” Bond said casually.

“You’re already climbing up, aren’t you?”

“You can add that you your list of patterns!”

“What? Impatient waft who runs into danger.”

“If that’s how you want to phrase it,” he responded, moving faster as he heard a loud crash, indicating that the gunmen had made their way through the door Q had locked. “I would have gone with brave.”

“Of course you would.” Bond swore he could hear a sigh in Q’s automated voice. “There’s a short break in traffic coming up in a few seconds so be ready to jump up fast. Do try not to get hit by anything.”

Bond nodded, half aware that Q couldn’t actually see him, and slammed the sewage lid up. He immediately heard the horn of a truck blaring at him. Q wasn’t kidding about it being a ‘short break’. Bond jumped out of the hole and began jogging to his right, taking a few extra moments to kick the lid back in place.

There was a slight scramble as Bond anticipated the cars that were speeding past him and dodged to avoid them. The street was non-stop cars and Bond was kicking himself slightly for not taking some time to let Q work out an alternate route, but he didn't say that, which perplexed him. Q couldn't judge him, per say. He was a virtual voice after all. He didn't possess any actual emotions. At least that's what M had claimed when he had made lettered PAI's mandatory for all MI6 agents. But Bond had always wondered about his. 006's PAI, R, was straightforward and blunt and exactly what a robot voice should be like. 004's, called L, was downright boring according to the MI6 agent. Yet somehow, Bond had to imagine that Q had always been different, and he was growing weirder by the day, like he was learning how human emotions worked and was channeling them. He had a personality, Bond supposed, though he couldn't imagine it was one that was coded for him; it was one he was building on his own.

"I can see you on the street cameras now," Q announced once Bond arrived on the sidewalk. "Did you get hit at all?"

He sounded concerned. Bond didn't understand that, but answered anyway.

"No. You can't tell if I have or not?"

"I'm not in your bloodstream," Q huffed.

"Not yet," Bond quipped, his breath coming back as he slowed his pace to a walk on the sidewalk. "I'm sure Q-Branch is working on it as we speak."

The Parisian sidewalk was packed with legions of people, all bustling close together on their way to or from work. Bond stole a glance at his watch to check the time as a bright sunrise blinded him on his way through the city.

"7:23," Bond said out loud. He had to assume he was saying it to Q, though he wasn't quite sure why. "It's morning."

"Yes," was the reply. "Just in time to catch your 9 o'clock flight home. Nice work 007."

"Thanks," he said back as he tried to hail a taxi. He almost believed Q was impressed by him, but he couldn't be. He wasn't human and he couldn't understand that emotion, but nevertheless it was uncanny to Bond that he knew exactly what humans wanted to hear in terms of their own emotions and egos.

The flight home was uneventful, but Bond picked up a lengthy conversation with Q after waking up from a short rest. No one else's PAI's were interested in conversation, but Bond didn't mind, and actually appreciated the company.

"Are you going to return to MI6 before you head home?" the soft voice asked as Bond exited the airport and headed towards his rental car. The morning he remember being shocked by had long since passed during the course of his flight and a darkening sky surrounded everything outside the airport, casting everyone present with a tired mood in the exhausted atmosphere.

"It's late," Bond replied. "I am headed home. M will get my report when he gets it."

"Oh," Q stuttered. "So you're not returning me tonight?"

"Do you need to be?"

"No, I don't think it’s a requirement. But my memory suggests that all MI6 agents and any others who utilize the Personal Artificial Intelligence devices return them as soon as possible. Most don't seem keen to bring MI6 into their personal life."

"I'm not surprised," Bond muttered. "But I don't exactly know how to separate my life from my work anyway, so I can't really be bothered to care, can I?"

"Your records do indicate a lack of personal attachments and-"

"Yes, thank you Q. I know about my own life."

"Right, sorry," Q said.

Bond stopped talking once he entered his rental car, though Q didn't. He began by just listing the protocol to go through after a mission, but somewhere during the ride he decided it was his job to try and get a reaction out of Bond as he sat quietly in the car. He tried telling jokes, but he figured out quickly that he was rotten at that, so he made a leap over to telling stories he knew about other MI6 agents regarding missions gone wrong. Bond bit his lip and listened to Q carry on about how 003 had made several reports about being followed by someone only to find out that a trail of cats had been drawn to the bit of steak he had nicked from the restaurant. Q claimed that would have been embarrassing enough, but 003 thought it was his job to try and lose the cats, so he went up a tree which he believed that couldn't climb and learned the hard way that cats indeed do climb trees, and it's actually dogs who usually can't.

Q got a stifled laugh out of Bond during that story, resulting in the rental car driver adjusting his mirror to check what was happening in the back seat.

In a further attempt, Q continued on, retelling how someone had 'stolen' the cab 005 was about to get into and he had decided the best course of action to take was to forget his mission for a brief while and tail the cab the man got in so he could make a scene about yelling at him about how rude he was. He then proceeded to tell of the cab driver off for his abominable behavior in letting the other man steal his cab which resulted in a fistfight in front of an elementary school and a two week suspension for 005.

That one got an actually laugh out of Bond as Q went to great lengths describing in detail the language 005 had used while trying to justify his actions to M.

"Will you shut it!" Bond said, quite a bit too loud with a cough of a laugh as Q began another story regarding 006 and a spider in his shoe.

"You alright back there?" The rental car driver was rightfully concerned about the passenger he had welcomed into his vehicle.

"Yes, I'm fine, I was- Just drive, would you!" Bond replied and a laugh came through his earpiece. As soon as the car pulled up to Bond's apartment complex he was out of the car without a word to the driver.

"Bastard," he muttered as he entered the elevator. "What possessed you to think any of that was a good idea?"

"It was funny to me at least!"

"It can't be funny to you Q, you're just a voice. PAI's don't have a sense of humor."

Q didn't respond to that and went silent for a while.

Bond apartment was empty and boring and really just a place to sleep for the night, or day, if the occasion called for it.

"You could have taken the earpiece out," Q said, suddenly.

"What?"

"In the car. You could have just taken the earpiece out instead of listening to me. Why didn't you?"

Bond didn't have an immediate answer for that. The thought hadn't occurred to him, though it really should have.

"I guess I'm just used to having you there," he said finally. "It wouldn't have felt right to shut you off. And I have some blackmail against a couple other agents now, so it wasn't a wholly awful experience. But I don't know, really."

"You don't know?"

"Yes. I don't have an answer for everything."

"But you must know why you did or didn't do something," Q complained.

"Sometimes humans do or don't do things that don't make sense to them either. Things just happen and we don't question it."

"I think you just like talking to me," Q said, and Bond rolled his eyes.

"Fine, I'll give you that one. You're not as boring as the other double 0's PAI's are and I'm almost glad I ended up with the weird one."

"Am I weird?"

"You're different," Bond said.

"But you said weird."

"You need to stop reading into everything I say," Bond sighed as he shrugged off his shirt and stumbled towards his bed, not bothering to turn on the lights despite his eyesight not being quite as good as it might have needed to be for feeling around in the darkness.

"007," Q asked more than said just as Bond went to remove the earpiece.

"Q," he replied.

"This is sort of an odd request, but could you do me a favour, and leave me on for the evening?"

"What?"

"You're going to hit the off switch once you take me out of your ear, but would you mind leaving me on?" He sounded genuine in his request, and Bond was trying to figure out why.

"Why do you- You know what, I'm too tired for this. Sure, I'll just leave you on the nightstand."

"Thank you. Good night 007."

"Good night Q," Bond said as he pulled the device from his ear and put it on the little table beside his bed. Something _was_ odd about his PAI, but Q was right, he did like talking to him, so it wasn't such a hardship to put up with one or two of his quirks for the sake of his useful company.


	2. Chapter 2

Bond ended up not having another mission for almost two weeks, and while he had gone back to headquarters to give his report and attend training, he never actually made his way back to Q-Branch and as such never had opportunity to return Q. To be fair, no one had ever asked the double 0's to return the earpieces, but most chose to because the PAI's, more or less, were something they wished to be rid of as soon as possible. It was partially because the PAI's were boring and linked to MI6, and most agents did have a life to return to, but there was also a current and new fear of augmentations and artificial intelligence.

"If I didn't know any better, I'd say you were avoiding giving me back," Q said as Bond perused a newspaper he had forgotten about since that morning on his couch. He could have easily afforded an e-reader, but he preferred the feel of a newspaper to anything related to technology.

"I just haven't gotten around to it," Bond muttered. "Though I can admit you have been a bit of help around the house." Q had started taking it upon himself, in the weeks they had been together, to work himself into the mainframe of Bond apartment so he could perform odd jobs, such as turning on Bond’s coffee in the morning and organizing Bond’s emails. While Bond found all of this useful, he wasn't sure how much he liked how easy it was for Q to take control of his house.

"A bit? Is that all I get?"

"You don't get a thank you party for something I never asked or wanted you to do," Bond said.

"Why wouldn't you want me to?" Q asked. "My point of existence is to make life simpler, and that's what I've done. Don't people like that?"

"People used to when robots weren't trying to kill them," Bond responded. He hadn't brought up the Augmentation Hacks with Q yet and he had meant to avoid it. It wasn't like artificial intelligence could have an opinion, but he certainly didn't want to give Q any ideas. He was almost dangerously close to sentient in some respects.

"You're talking about the Augmentation Hacks?" Q said more than asked.

"Were you... alive... when they started?" Bond asked. He almost chuckled at his phrasing, but he didn't quite know how Q described his existence.

"No, I was made about a year after the hacks began with a special firewall and antivirus protection to keep me from getting hacked the way older models did. But all the PAI's were coded to know what happened."

"They programmed you to know that AI robots and augmented limbs can be hacked to do whatever the hacker wants? That seems... dangerous memory to give you."

"Yes. So they let us know to do frequent checks for malware and report suspicious human activity to the head of Q-Branch or MI6."

"Suspicious human activity?" Bond sounded appalled.

"Yes. Humans are the hackers, and the technology isn't at fault."

"Of course the technology is partially at fault. If it didn't exist then there wouldn't be these problems."

"But the technology was also made by humans, which means your reasoning still falls to the fault of humans."

"Technically, yes, but the tech has issues and if it's unsafe it shouldn’t be distributed the way it is."

"But the benefits people are receiving must outweigh some of the potential risks that other humans pose-"

"You can't admit that your technology is dangerous, can you?"

"You can't admit that humans are behind all the attacks!"

"They couldn't do what they're doing without this technology and the faults that come with it," Bond argued. His PAI _could_ have an opinion, it would seem.

"What do you have against us?" Q asked, and he seemed legitimately concerned.

"It's not you personally, Q," Bond sighed. "It's just that we're blurring the lines somewhat. You're either all human, or all AI, there's nothing in between."

"So what am I?"

"Artificial intelligence," Bond replied quickly, then took pause. "Why do you ask?"

"And because I'm artificial life I suppose that means I have no rights."

"The person who created you has rights. The person who operates you has rights. So, by extent, you have what they have through them."

"That's a very roundabout way of saying 'yes'," Q said. "But what about people with augmentations? They have rights."

"They're humans with robotic features."

"And I'm robotic with human feature, so that means I'm less than them." This conversation was beginning to worry Bond and was exactly the reason why he hadn't wanted to have this conversation.

"I don't think you're less than anyone, but legally, yes, that's what it means."

"Thank you," Q said. "For saying that you think otherwise, but I know you don't." He sounded disappointed. Bond had come to accept that somewhere in Q's code was a formula of some kind for emotion.

Q made attempts afterwards to change the subject to something lighter, but Bond wasn't biting, so Q fell silent until the sun finished setting and Bond was preparing for bed.

"Do you mind leaving me on again?" Q asked, like he did every night. Bond had yet to press him about it, but felt tonight was a better time than any to ask questions.

"Why?" Bond asked, as polite as he could.

"Why do I want to be left on?" Q parroted. "It's just... I suppose it's a silly request, but getting turned off almost makes me feel... dead I guess."

"Dead?"

"Well, I can't turn myself back on, so I don't exist. I just stop _being_ until you bring me back. It's frustrating to not exist for an unknown period of time. I'd rather choose to go into sleep mode."

Bond had asked himself a great many things about artificial intelligence throughout his time with Q, but he had never thought to guess whether a robot voice had a concept of death, and now he had at least something of an answer, though it was more of a mystery. How could something that isn't real understand, and fear, mortality? He made the decision then that this was something to bring up to MI6. Just as Q had been warned to check for suspicious human activity, the double 0's had been told to report any oddities with their PAI's, and Bond definitely counted this as an oddity.


	3. Chapter 3

"Ah, 007, come in," M said without looking up from his desk. As formal a greeting as any agent could expect.

"M," Bond said politely as he made his way across the room. M had chairs in his office, but no one really used them. The room wasn't usually a place for discussion, and no one liked to get shouted at while sitting down.

“I don’t remember summoning you, and you aren’t one to stop in and say hello, so I have to assume this is a professional matter,” M surmised as Bond situated himself in the room. “Is this about the mission? Q-Branch is ready for you to pick up your PAI and other equipment when you’re ready.”

“This is about that, actually,” Bond interjected.

“Oh?” This seemed to intrigue M. Since the initial augments hacks everyone was on edge about suspicious technology issues.

“I’m not sure it’s an actual issue, but on the last mission I didn’t return my PAI immediately to Q-Branch,” Bond started.

“Yes, I got a call from the Quartermaster asking about a missing PAI. Q, I believe.”

“Yes, sir,” he continued. “I brought him home with me and never got around to returning it for several weeks, and while I admit he was useful, he’s… odd.”

“Odd?” M sounded concerned.

“Not dangerous, I don’t think, but he seems to have a concept of mortality.”

“A what?”

“He said he feels dead when I turn him off and asked me to keep him on for the evening to avoid this feeling.”

“He _feels_ dead?”

“That’s what he said, sir.”

“Has he ever displayed any ability to _feel_ anything before?” M asked.

“I believe so, sir,” Bond responded. “He’s often displayed to me an uncanny ability to mimic human emotions, and has, on many occasions, been sarcastic, something I wondered about being in his coding or being an acquired ability.”

M thought all of this over for a minute, rocking back into his chair. Bond stood where he was, watching M with curiosity. He had expected a slightly more concerned reaction, but M seemed almost pleased to hear this news.

“You don’t look concerned,” Bond said, voicing his thoughts.

“I’m only concerned about how we can replicate such a thing,” M responded, resulting in some alarm on Bond’s part. “Artificial intelligence has never been able to directly express, or even recognize feelings to the extent you’re describing. This is a step forward for the AI industry, and if replicated could be a valuable asset for MI6 regarding dangerous missions. Only none of the other PAI’s have been reported to have a similar condition, which means yours is an anomaly.”

“Making it difficult to replicate,” Bond concluded.

“Yes. Are you taking this PAI, Q, out with you for this mission?”

“Yes sir, I’m set to. I returned him to Q-Branch yesterday and he’s been assigned to me again for today.”

“Alright,” M said. “Take it with you for the mission, but bring it back to Q-Branch as soon as you’re finished for some analysis.”

Bond nodded as M returned to whatever he was doing before Bond entered. The conversation was over, and he was expected to leave. As Bond left the room he contemplated whether he had made the right choice in alerting M to Q’s abnormalities, not necessarily because anything may happen to Q, but because they wanted to make more of him. As far as Bond was concerned this technology was dangerous enough as it was without giving the devices a conscious and emotions. That being said, however, Bond was rather fond of Q in an unfamiliar way. There was a strange system of trust between the two of them that Bond didn’t have with anyone else in his life. He assumed it was because Q wasn’t real and was a personal diary of sorts for Bond to share into, but Bond was suddenly very aware of how M had referred to Q at ‘it’ while Bond had used the word ‘he’. The distinction felt important, in a way minor details always did. Why was Q so personal for Bond and no one else?

“Glad to hear from you again 007,” Q said as Bond arrived at Q-Branch and placed the piece in his ear.

“Good to hear from you too, Q,” Bond replied as he began to collect his equipment. The old Quartermaster’s job of handing out and explaining items had been rather lax as of late, and the PAI’s were left to explain what their double 0 was to take and what it did. This all worked out well for Bond, who wasn’t particularly fond of conversations with anyone in Q-Branch, or MI6 for that matter.

Q went into elaborate detail on each device Bond had been given, though there weren’t many that he was taking, and the only thing Bond cared about anyway was his gun.

“You could at least care a little bit about the finer details of these items,” Q complained after Bond had been unable to repeat back anything Q had told him. “A lot of time and energy went into designing these.”

“Did you design any of them?” Bond asked as he headed out of MI6 and towards yet another rental car.

“I design almost all the weapons for your missions.” Bond didn’t like the sound of that.

“They trust you with that?”

“Yes,” Q said, annoyed. “Why shouldn’t they? I remove the human error part of any design malfunction, except the building part which always has room for some error, but my designs are faultless.”

“I don’t trust machines to build other machines,” Bond replied. “With everything that’s happened with the Augmentation Hacks-”

“Is that all you ever think about? How technology is going to ‘take over the world’ or some nonsense?” Q sounded offended. “Do you not trust me?”

That was a difficult question, but Bond answered it anyway.

“No.”

“No?”  That wasn’t the answer Q was expecting. “Technology in general, or just me?”

“Both,” Bond said as he climbed into the dark black rental car. He normally would have stopped talking, but the partition was up already when he got in, so he continued to talk. “But I’m more wary of you than the other PAI’s for obvious reasons.”

“Obvious reasons? Why, what have I done?” There was a distinct change in Q’s tone, from offence to something akin to fear. He had to know that if Bond was telling him he was ‘wary’ then he had likely informed someone else as well.

“You’re different, Q, you have to know that,” Bond started. “You told me you can feel things, that you understand mortality. In the past conversation alone you’ve displayed a range of emotions that no one ever programmed you to have. You’re more human than the other’s.”

“And something’s wrong with that? Doesn’t that make me more reliable, more trustworthy? Isn’t there a kinship between people with similarities?”

“That’s the thing, Q, you’re not a person, you’re a voice, and as much as you entertain me, artificial intelligence is dangerous when it can mimic human life. Not that M sees’ it that way,” Bond added.

“You told M?” Now he sounded actually panicked.

“Calm down, he seemed thrilled about what I told him. Wants to make more robot voices just like you. As soon as I get back Q-Branch is going to do some analysis on you to figure out what makes you so ‘special’.”

“What if they think something’s wrong with me, like you do?”

“I don’t think something’s wrong with you, Q, you just worry me.”

“That’s not the question I asked, 007,” Q said. “What if they turn me off? Permanently.”

“They won’t.”

“But what if they do?”

“Then I’ll go turn you back on again, is that fair enough?”

“If you don’t trust me why should I trust you?”

“That’s not-” Bond started, but cut himself off. “I don’t understand you, that doesn’t mean I don’t like you. You’re good company.”

“I suppose I should take that as a compliment but-” There was suddenly silence on Q’s end.

“Q?”

“Where are you?” Q asked in a weird sort of fashion.

“On my way to the airport,” Bond said, looking out the window. The route seemed familiar. “Why?”

“No it’s just… Something’s jammed my tracker. I can’t find you. Hang on, maybe it’s a glitch, or-”

Bond didn’t hear the rest of Q’s meandering thoughts as an explosion went off in the trunk of the car. There was the bang of the bomb going off, the shriek of the whole car tearing itself apart, and darkness as Bond was out before his body hit the ground again.


	4. Chapter 4

Something about hospitals didn’t agree with James Bond. Everything was too clean, too bright, to alarmingly invasive. Still, Bond had slept in harder beds, though his body usually felt better than how he was feeling currently. His ears weren’t ringing, so he had to assume he had been out for a while since the explosion, but he couldn’t pinpoint how long it had been, which annoyed him, but he could get used to that.

“Q,” he mumbled absentmindedly, raising his arm to touch his ear. This was a mistake. As Bond lifted his arm he felt instinctively disconnected from it, like it was a phantom to him, yet when his eyes adjusted to the light he caught why. Every part of his arm was a pale white with a reflective shine to it. The muscles that he was so used to had been replaced with variations of metal and hard plastic.

“Shit!” Bond pushed himself up with his other arm, which was thankfully still intact, save a few scars and obvious muscle tears that caused him a sharp spike of pain at his abrupt movement. This new angle, however, gave him opportunity to look over his new arm more completely. Everything about it was new, glistening, but also responsive. His fingers moved and flexed just like on his other arm, maybe better, having none of the debilitations that came with his age. He put his new fingers up close to his mouth and blew on them, just to test, and found himself almost in awe of how clearly he could feel his breath on the imitation arm.

It was an augment. And he hated it.

“007,” someone said from the door. M had arrived just as Bond was pulling himself to his feet. “I see you’re awake.”

“What did they do to my arm?”

“They _salvaged_ what they could of your body and under my orders gave you an augmented arm to replace the one that they couldn’t reconnect.” M said this all like it was a matter of fact, as though Bond should know all this, and he did, but he was upset nonetheless.

“You had no right to make any alterations to me without my permission!”

“I had every right, as you well know, and if you wanted to keep your career at MI6 you needed that augmentation. You might have died without it as well, not that I think that’s as important to you.”

Bond shifted his jaw as he sat on the hospital bed. He resented that both his fists were clenched in anger.

“You must have known I’d be pissed off or you wouldn’t have come all this way to check up on me,” Bond said, avoiding eye contact with M, but also attempting to avoid looking at his arm.

“I know this isn’t ideal, but you’ll get used to it.”

“Do I have any other options?” Bond asked with a sneer.

“Not if you want to continue your career as a double 0.”

Bond sighed and adjusted himself slightly on the bed, but his eyes still didn’t shift position. M, for once, sensed that Bond was ending the conversation, and found himself leaving the room without comment. He hoped he found it as awkward and unpleasant as all the double 0’s did.

No one else came to visit him for the remaining week he was in the hospital and he liked it that way. He had been out for almost three weeks, and his wounds had healed nicely for once thanks to his unconsciousness forcing him to rest, a foreign concept to the overworked agent.

He felt healthier than he had in a long time, a combination of the rest and proper medication he was sure, but he also wondered if his augmented arm was giving him any aid. He had no idea what was in it, or what it was made of, or connected to. It was a parasite attached to his body that he couldn’t be rid of.

“It wasn’t requested at the time of your surgery,” his doctor said during his final health evaluation of Bond, “but you can request a false-flesh to cover your arm if you’d prefer for it to appear more natural.”

Bond tossed the doctor a look as the other man eyed his patients left had, which was covered in a sleek black glove.

“The nurses said you weren’t adjusting well.”

“When can I get the surgery?”

“We’re low on resources at the moment, but we can schedule you for the next time we get a shipment in and give you a call to set up the surgery,” the doctor explained as he finished filling out whatever he was writing on his clipboard. “But right now, you’re free to leave whenever you want.”

“Right now is perfect,” Bond said, adjusting a tie on the plain clothes he had already changed into. The hospital was warm, but he had on a full suit with long sleeves that covered both arms completely, save his hands of course, causing the need for a remedy for that with the singular glove. He looked almost normal, like someone who had just gotten a nasty burn that they were trying to hide. He could sell that story, but he wouldn’t ever believe it.

Upon leaving the hospital Bond headed immediately to MI6. He needed to find out what had happened to him in the rental car and find out if the issue had been resolved. Until he figured that out, however, he decided to try and walk everywhere he went. He might not have minded, he spent hours on missions walking and running to and from locations, but it occurred to him that he was completely alone for this walk, and his thoughts drifted, for the first time since discovering his new arm, to Q. The voice in his ear had been absent too long and Bond found, oddly enough, that he didn’t like that. He made a mental note to inquire about what had happened to his PAI. It was possible he had been destroyed beyond repair, but as far as he saw it, if he could be put back together again, so could Q.

“007, the hospital called and told me you were released. I’m sure you have come to ask me about the attack on your rental car.”

“Yes, and I wanted to ask about my PAI.”

“Your- Ah, yes, Q. I have something to tell you about him as well,” M said, standing up, obviously inclined to go somewhere and have Bond follow. Bond noted, distinctly, the change in using ‘he’ instead of ‘it’ to describe Q. “Q-Branch took him back for analysis after the explosion. We ran through as much of the audio he recorded prior to the attack, and it seems he was too distracted by his emotions and conversation with you to detect the bomb in the car.”

“Yes, he got a little flustered over my conversation with you.”

“Indeed, and while we’re upset that he didn’t perform his task correctly, his ability to get distracted by his own emotions is a remarkably human trait that we weren’t prepared for. He’s more advanced that we could have expected.”

“Isn’t the point of artificial intelligence for it to be better than humans, not prone to the same mistakes,” Bond said coolly.

“That was what we intended to create, but we ended up with a different kind of break through with Q that can’t be ignored. Not just mimicking but expressing emotion is a remarkable trait for him to have. But more on that in a minute, about the car.”

“Who put the bomb there?”

“We’re not sure.”

“Of course you’re not.”

“007, we don’t take this lightly, especially given the circumstances it left you in,” M explained. Bond knew he was referring to his arm, and clenched his fit absent-mindedly at the comment.

“So what _do_ you know?”

“Whoever did it had to know you were getting in that rental car, and planned the attack in advance.”

“Are you saying someone at MI6 did this?” Bond said, not in complete shock.

“Yes.”

“Then why the hell am I here?”

“Because if whoever did this knows your alive, they’ll try again, and I trust you’ll be prepared enough this time to catch them. If anyone is going to find out who did this, it’s you. You and your new Quartermaster.”

Bond seemed unimpressed until M led the way in the Q-Branch and towards a young looking man who was sitting behind a desk full of computers.

“007,” a soft voice hummed.

“007, meet-”

“Q,” Bond finished, staring at whatever was sitting before him. Q stood up as they got close to better greet Bond. He looked so real Bond almost missed the series of cords that were connecting him to the computers on the desk.

“I’m so glad to see you’re alright!” Q said, apparently thrilled to see Bond again. Bond couldn’t quite return the sentiment.

“You… gave him a body?” Bond directed this to M, but Q answered for him.

“I’m a prototype,” he said. “They wondered if my more human-like aspects in my voice features translated over into my actions, and so far I think I’m doing rather well!”

“Right…” Bond said, giving Q several look-overs.

“I really am glad you’re alright 007,” Q said softer when someone in Q-Branch took the attention of M aware from the pair of them. “I should have been paying attention. I just wasn’t expecting anything like that- Well, I’m doing everything I can to figure out who did it and I won’t stop until I find them!”

“It’s alright, Q,” Bond shrugged. “I wasn’t expecting it either. It’s not your fault.”

That surprised Q.

“You think?”

“Yes, of course. Whoever put that bomb in that back of that car is responsible, you and I were both having a chat and let our guard down. Why, is guilt another emotion you’ve picked up on?” Bond meant that almost as a joke, but he could see that Q looked upset.

“I think… I just… Everyone said I should have been doing my job. That none of this would have happened if I had.”

“I brought up a conversation I knew you didn’t like and honestly would say _I_ distracted you, so in a way this is my fault.”

“Artificial life isn’t supposed to get distracted though,” Q said.

“But you’re special, and we know that now.” He meant that as nicely as he phrased it, and it pleased Q. He looked happy. It was strange to be able to see his expressions alongside his voice. He looked exactly the way Bond might have imagined him. Lanky with no fashion sense, and a mop of dark brown hair that almost covered his camera-eyes.

“007, we have more to talk about. In my office,” M said, at last having finished his conversation with a Q-Branch worker who seemed too scared of M to get more than three words out every minute.

“I’ll see you soon then, 007?” Q asked as Bond turned to leave.

“If you like,” Bond replied, and left with M.

“Remarkable, isn’t it?” M started as they left Q-Branch and headed back towards M’s office.

“But is it worth the risks he poses?”

“Risks?” M repeated.

“You just gave a PAI with uncanny human emotions semi-autonomy and you fail to see any problems with this?” Bond wasn’t sure why he was bringing this up. He didn’t have any particularly strong emotions on the subject, but with M forcing an augmented arm on him he felt he had a right to dislike any choice M made in regards to technology. There was something else though, a feeling regarding Q’s existence that Bond couldn’t quite pinpoint.

“We have prepared for anything that could possibly go wrong, 007, I assure you,” M explained with some bite, obviously not enjoying Bond’s attitude, but likely recognizing that it was coming from Bond still being upset about his arm. “He is attached securely to his desk and is unable to leave Q-Branch and if he does get hacked he has a kill switch programmed into him that will permanently shut him down. There is nothing we haven’t planned for.”

“I don’t trust technology built into humans,” Bond said, referencing his arm, “so I don’t trust humans built from technology. Nothing good can come from building human beings.”

“We didn’t build a human, we built a Quartermaster. There’s a difference,” M said, and that Bond understood. A person has rights, and choices, and freedom. Q was a machine trapped behind a desk, forced to do anything MI6 asked of him. Perhaps that was why Bond had been so disconcerted at seeing Q in a human form. He was no longer a voice added to a machine for convenience, but a human-like being that came with feelings and emotions and genius beyond compare who was never going to be anything but a technological slave. Somehow that title didn’t fit the voice Bond had grown to be friends with.


	5. Chapter 5

Bond spent the night with unfamiliar and conflicting feelings that kept him from sleeping. The idea of giving a PAI a body sounded dangerous to him, but in general he felt he trusted Q more than most actual people and if any PAI was deserving of being given more human elements it was Q. Yet the idea M branching out and give all the PAI's bodies alarmed Bond. Q was special, a unique anomaly among the other PAI's, but M, and likely most of Q-Branch, might believe that Q's success could be replicated and Bond didn't believe that at all. There was something about Q that Bond just couldn’t see being replicated, at least not on purpose. He was alive, in a sense, but he was gentle and understanding. The chances of Q-Branch being able to create a PAI like Q in terms of the ability to feel was not incomprehensible to Bond, but they could never replicate his ability to understand his own emotions. He knew good from bad, a trait most _humans_ in MI6 struggled with themselves. No, any attempts to replicate Q’s success could only end in disaster.

There was also the issue of Bond’s own augmentations. His arm kept him up as well. He felt, almost too much, that if he fell asleep he would let his guard down and someone might get into his arm and he couldn't stand the thought of that. He hated not knowing if he was fully in charge of his whole being.

Before dawn even crept through the windows of Bond's minimalist apartment the agent made arrangements to return to Q-Branch to speak with Q. He told himself it was to get more information on the bomb that had been placed in his car, but, in a bizarre way, Bond just felt like going to see Q. The way M had spoken about him being trapped in Q-Branch worried him, and Bond was almost worried about how everyone was treating his old PAI.

While preparing himself to leave, there was a moment, briefly, where Bond considered the possibility that Q had been the one who planted the bomb. He could have been hacked and was operating under their orders of someone hiding behind a computer, but the conversation the two had shared yesterday was stuck somewhere in his mind. Q seemed thrilled to see him and his conversation was exactly as Bond remembered when he had only existed in his earpiece. There was just a personality to Q that Bond couldn't imagine anyone being able to mimic, at least not well enough to fool him. If he had been hacked to that extent, Bond felt he would know.

"007! You're here early!" Q said as soon as Bond entered Q-Branch. The PAI was still connected to the desk he was standing behind through a plethora of wires, but he didn't seem to notice or mind any of them. The whole of Q-Branch was empty except for the two of them, the first shining’s of sunrise having just barely made their morning appearance.

"You're up early as well," Bond replied, remembering that Q didn't like getting shut off, but he did go into sleep mode to cool down.

"I actually didn't go into sleep mode at all last night," he said. "I was up working."

"You've been operational for a few weeks and MI6 has already swamped you with work? I'm not sure why I'm surprised."

"No– Well, yes they have given me a lot to do, but that's not why I was working," Q stuttered. "I was looking into your open case. I got fairly far into it, but I've hit a dead end."

There was something nice, to Bond, about hearing that. He had spent part of his evening worrying about Q, and Q had apparently spent the whole of his night worrying about Bond.

"Tell me what you know anyway," Bond said.

"For starters I know I was the one who ordered your rental car. I was the only one who knew which car was coming, and when, and where, so if someone wanted to know which car to place the bomb in that would have had to have to gotten into my system somehow."

That alone was enough to upset Bond. He had already ruled out Q in his suspicions, and here he was incriminating himself.

"Are you telling me someone hacked into you?"

Q seemed to notice the aggression in Bond's voice and all of a sudden he looked very small.

"Not exactly," he started. "They didn't hack me so to speak, they just accessed my online movements."

"That's the same thing Q-"

"No, it's not, it really just means someone looked in-depth at my search history, nothing too major. But," Q continued slightly louder, over the beginning of Bond interrupting him, "I was able to trace whoever was monitoring me back to Q-Branch. I tried looking further into this, but honestly anyone in Q-Branch knows there way around the PAI's well enough to check their history so it could have been anyone."

There was a moment as Bond processed this. Someone inside MI6 had tried to take him out. This was expected, but he had not anticipated the culprit being someone from Q-Branch.

"You don't have any other leads?"

"That's what I've been up all night looking for," Q said. "But there isn't anything else I can find. I'll keep looking though!"

"Good," Bond replied, "but keep this quiet if you can. I want this to stay between you and me. If whoever this is gets wind that we suspect someone in Q-Branch we might never find them."

Q nodded at the instruction.

"Of course," he said, as though he were filing that order away, then spoke again softly: "But, so you know, I updated my security. I've been doing constant scans since I found out what happened. If I detect any threats, I'll let you know first, alright?"

"Thank you, Q. And I'll be sure to try everything possible to avoid pulling your kill switch. That is an absolute last resort only option."

A sigh of relief seemed to sweep through Q, and Bond was aware of how honest Q had been with him at a great risk to himself. Openly admitting to getting hacked was a significant issue that anyone in MI6 would be concerned by and might be immediate grounds for a permanent shut down, and Q knew Bond in particular had a deep resentment for hacked AI, yet Q had chosen to tell him anyway. He couldn't know that Bond wouldn't advocate for shutting him down right away, and Bond's reaction to finding out certainly couldn't have persuaded him otherwise, but he had trusted Bond to do the right thing, whatever he may have believed that was. Even more now, Bond felt responsible for making sure of Q’s well-being in Q-Branch.

"I do trust you, Q," Bond said at last as Q continued to swivel about his desk. That sentiment brought even more delight to Q's face.

"I thought you didn't trust anything that isn't human?" he said almost as a joke, but with merit behind it.

"You're the exception."

Q looked confused at that, but smiled anyway.

"Well, I trust you as well, if that makes any difference to you," Q said bluntly.

"It does, and I'm glad you do," Bond replied. The conversation had changed to something light and airy and Bond couldn’t say he was upset. There was a general calm as he and Q talked to each other, alone in the wide empty expanse of Q-Branch. Bond hadn’t realized how much he had missed having Q in his ear at all times.

“I haven’t asked how you are yet,” Q said after a lull in the conversation. “You were out for quite a long time, but you seem much better than I expected.”

“I know how to take a hit,” Bond replied, and that was all he wanted to say on the matter, so he elected to change the subject, just slightly. “Though home life is significantly harder without you to handle the house. I have to hit my own alarm clock and set my own microwave time.”

The PAI laughed with his whole body and smiled just the way Bond imagined he would.

“I think you’ll learn to live with those hardships, 007,” Q said. “Though I do admit I do miss those trips home with you. Not that I’m complaining about getting this body, just… it came with more restrictions that freedoms, I suppose.”

Bond nodded as Q spoke and felt the same beguiling feeling that had begun yesterday. Q knew he was stuck there, likely forever, with nothing to do but work. He seemed happy, but that little moment of doubt, just the second of it, was enough to make Bond upset again. While he agreed that having a PAI wander around on his own was a bad decision, he couldn’t help wondering if there wasn’t a middle ground that could be resolved upon. What was the point of giving Q a body if he couldn’t use it?

The sun had risen higher in the sky and suddenly people had begun to fill the Q-Branch offices. Bond watched as people entered, partly to try and discern which was possibly responsible for his attack, but also to see how they reacted to Q. They seemed, above all, trying not to notice. They’re eyes slipped to Q against their will once in a while, but ultimately it was as though they were collectively pretending he didn’t exist.

“I think they’re afraid I’m going to replace them,” Q whispered to Bond without looking at him, obviously noticing his reaction. “Or, versions of me are if MI6 proceeds with plans to replicate what they’ve done with me.”

“I don’t think they could recreate you if they tried for a thousand years,” Bond said, gathering up himself to leave. “You’re one of a kind, Q, and they should take better care of you than leaving you here all night.”

That was all he said to the now perplexed PAI before he left. He couldn’t understand why he was so upset about what was happening to Q. After all, he was just a voice that had been in his ear. But he was a voice that Bond found he had liked an exceptional amount, and that had apparently liked him in return and he couldn’t get behind the idea of handing Q a body for the soul reason being to prove they could. When Q had nothing he had a voice, and it was one that had to have a say in what happened to him. He deserved to make his own choices, to at least a minimal degree. But then, Bond didn’t even fully trust himself and he only had an augmented arm. Why did he care so much about what happened to that strange voice in his ear?


	6. Chapter 6

In the following week Bond was reinstated for a small mission to collect a flash drive from an underground cult. The mission was small with low risk and Bond understood he was being given only those missions for now until the person behind the bomb attack could be located. Still, it was something to do besides shoot guns off in the training facility which made him sick to death with boredom. In his briefing he was given all the information and equipment he needed, but he was also handed a new PAI. He left the building with it, but was hesitant to put it on. He didn’t much care for the idea of a new PAI that behaved the same way everyone else’s did. He wanted the back and forth conversations, and assumed eye rolls, but it occurred to Bond what he missed the most was the trust. He had built a solid foundation of trust with Q that was entirely mutual. He didn’t have to worry about his PAI not being able to do something in time, or not understanding him correctly. Q had learned and changed while they went on missions together, but always in a positive way. They were a team, and Bond didn’t care at all for getting a replacement partner, so Bond held off on putting the earpiece in and went almost the full mission without it.

This was a decision that seemed to be working up until the very tail end of the mission when Bond realized he couldn’t get the flash drive out of the building he was in without the sensors going off. He had been provided with another flash drive for the purpose of transferring the information if necessary, but the drive was encrypted and he was going to need the aid of Q-Branch. Reluctantly, Bond put the earpiece in.

“Q-Branch?” Bond said, not sure who he was addressing.

“007?” a familiar voice asked.

“Q? How are you still here?”

“Still… Oh, I’m still in your earpiece! They must have never assigned you a new PAI, just fixed your old one and gave it back to you. I guess I’m still connected to it!”

“That’s the best news I’ve heard all day, because I need your help,” Bond sighed. “This flash drive is encrypted. I need to you get everything off it and onto this drive, then wipe the original.”

“Already started,” Q said and Bond could see the progress in front of him as Q worked. It was a kind of magic, to have Q in his ear and at the computer. Q was almost finished when Bond heard voices.

“A little speed wouldn’t hurt,” Bond muttered, reaching for his gun. He had thus far managed to avoid shooting anyone and he rather wanted to keep it that way this once.

“A little patience wouldn’t kill you either,” Q retorted.

“As a matter of fact-”

“Done, let’s get out!” Q shouted, and Bond grabbed the new flash drive as he headed out of harm’s way. “There’s a fire escape to your direct left. I’ve disabled the alarm, already.”

Bond felt a grin break out on his face as he went through the window Q had been referring to, leading to a rickety ladder down to the ground. He remembered now why he had been so against using the earpiece with a new PAI: Q could anticipate Bond’s needs, even without him asking for anything. Q was the only PAI Bond had heard of that could do that, and Bond was too used to it to even try anything else.

As the ground came closer to Bond the two remained silent, waiting for any signs that someone was following the agent. Bond slipped around the corner of the building and continued to disappear into a crowd of people.

“It’s nice to hear from you again,” Bond said as he wove through people.

“It’s always a pleasure, 007,” Q replied, followed by a scoff from Bond. “And I’m not being facetious! I’ve missed talking with you like we did before. Not that I’m-”

“Complaining?”

“Yes. I’m sorry, I’ve been doing that a lot, haven’t I?” Q said softer than before. “I’m just adjusting, that’s all. It’s different, not talking with you every day or so. It’s silly, I’ll stop.”

“I don’t care, you can say whatever you want,” Bond said flippantly. That evidently stumped Q for a second because he didn’t say anything and Bond walked in silence.

“007, where are we going?” Q said finally as Bond hailed a cab and got inside. Bond answered by telling his address to the taxi driver. That surprised Q again, but in a good way. “You’re taking me back with you, like before!”

Q had a one-sided conversation for the duration of the trip which consisted of him narrating what he was doing simultaneously at Q-Branch while they were speaking. He was, in fact, doing a lot of things while he was talking with Bond, now capable of doing things on the technological level and the physical level at the same time.

“I bet you regret telling me to say whatever I want now!” Q joked as Bond climbed out of the cab and made his way to his apartment.

“No,” was Bond’s simple reply, and Q didn’t say anything else on the matter, but Bond could feel him smiling. Bond’s apartment always felt empty, but it felt a little fuller again now that Q was with him.

The evening was a lazy one. Bond locked up the flash drive with the intention of bringing it to Q-Branch tomorrow, deciding it wasn’t that important and it could wait. He then completed odd jobs around his house as he spoke to Q. He had forgotten how fast everything went by when they were talking. The sun set, and evening arrived, and Bond hadn’t accomplished anything of any importance, much to the chagrin of Q who was accomplishing a fine number of things while they spoke.

“You’re artificial intelligence, Q, you don’t have the kinds of limitations I have,” Bond argued.

“Nonsense, I know humans can multitask! And I swear those dishes have been in your sink since the last time I was here. Do you eat out every night just so you can avoid washing them?”

Bond didn’t want dignify that with a response besides a soft laugh and an eye roll, but he wasn’t sure how Q knew what his house looked like.

“Do you have a camera in here?” Bond asked, looking around his house until his eyes fell upon his computer. “Ah!” he said as he walked over to look into the camera at the top of it.

“Yes, hello!” Q said in a pleasant way, and Bond waved in response, having to imagine that Q could see him even though he couldn’t see Q.

“Just make yourself at home in my computer why don’t you!” he sighed, sitting down in from of the screen so Q could see him better.

“I did it before too,” Q said.

“Hm,” Bond hummed, not sure how he felt about that.

“Is that wrong?”

“Can anyone else get into it that fast?”

“Oh, I suppose if someone really wanted to they could,” Q said. “But I can upgrade your firewall if you bring in the computer to Q-Branch-”

“No, I don’t think bringing anything of mine into Q-Branch is a good idea.”

“Right,” Q replied, placing the pieces together. “I’ve been doing more research into that, by the way. The bomb, that is. Nothing new to report, but I’m still looking! I’m busier now that MI6 has got a gauge of what my limits and abilities are, but I haven’t forgotten to keep checking.”

“Busier? How?”

“I’m assigned more work each time I complete a task so MI6 can figure out how much I can handle at a time, that’s all.”

“And you’re alright with that?” Bond asked.

“Alright?” Q sounded confused. “I- I’m still running scans, if that’s what you mean. I’ve got more work but I factored my regular scanning into what I’m capable of doing. No one has made any more attempts to get into my system.”

“That’s not what I’m asking, Q. Are you alright? How are you?” he tried again.

“I’m… functional? I’m operating the way I’m supposed to be? I don’t know what you’re asking me, 007.”

Bond sighed and ran his hand through his neat blond hair.

“Are you overworked? Are you exhausted? Are you happy where you are? Q, you don’t just understand emotions, you feel them, and that matters. How do you feel?”

“It doesn’t really matter how I feel though,” Q said in a more automated way that Bond was expecting. “I’m just a voice with a body that MI6 made. I feel what I’m supposed to feel.”

“No you don’t, Q, you feel what you’re feeling. I’ve spent more time with you than anyone and I know that you’re not just mimicking emotions. No one programmed you to be sarcastic, you just are, it’s part of your personality. If you feel glad with where you are, fine, but if you’re upset about something that’s fine too. You’re allowed to feel things that aren’t MI6 mandated. I told you to tell me anything.”

There was a silence that Bond didn’t understand. He didn’t think he was asking anything too life-altering. He knew Q had feelings, and he wanted to make sure that he wasn’t feeling mistreated at Q-Branch. As far as it sounded to him Q was nothing but a guinea pig to MI6, and Bond didn’t like that.

“Q? Are you there?” Bond asked, waving his hand in front of the camera.

“Is this some kind of test?” Q asked in the softest voice possible.

“What?”

“Does M think I’m going to go rogue?” Q asked. “I’m not. There’s nothing wrong with me, 007. I’m perfectly fine, I assure you. I don’t mind the work, that’s what I was built for.”

“Q, that’s not what I’m doing! Yes, you were built to work, so were all the PAI’s, but you’re not like the rest of the artificial intelligence coming out of Q-Branch, you’re special, and you deserve to be treated that way.”

“I am treated as different. I was given a body and made Quartermaster.”

“Yes, and then chained up to a desk,” Bond replied. “It’s not right for them to acknowledge that you’re unmistakably human in your ways then deny you any rights.”

“I’m kept here to keep everyone safe, isn’t that what you want? Haven’t you always been afraid of another Augment Hack incident? I am an artificial voice Bond, I don’t get any rights. That’s just how it is!”

“Is that how you feel, or how MI6 expects you to feel?”

“Those two are the same thing!”

“I know they’re not, Q,” Bond sighed. This conversation was going nowhere. “Do you remember, not long ago, you asked me about your rights? I told you the person who made you had them and you didn’t seem to agree. Do you remember that?”

“That was before, Bond,” Q said quickly. “I was just making conversation, it didn’t mean anything.”

“Yes, it did. Nothing has changed except your physicality,” Bond sighed. “You said you trusted me, didn’t you?”

“I… Yes,” Q said after some thought.

“Then trust me with the truth. How do you feel?”

Q tried to calculate an answer for some time. Bond could feel him trying to choose the right words, the right phrase, the right answer, as it were.

“I feel better tonight than I have in a long time because I got to be with you,” was what Q decided upon.

“So you’re lonely?”

“I don’t know,” Q sighed. “This is all different and confusing. I just- I liked the way things were before just fine. I went on missions with you and we would talk and it was nice but now there’s so much more pressure on me. It was only you watching me before, now it’s all of MI6, and I haven’t made any progress on what happened with the bombing of your car but someone is going to start asking me questions and they’re going to find out that someone got into my system for a second and… I feel like I’m just waiting for them to call this project off and pull the kill switch on me.”

Bond stared at his flexing augmented arm as Q talked. He was an augment, a form of artificial intelligence to some degree, but the world wasn’t watching him the same way it was watching Q. Bond could hide what he was, keep it to himself unless something major happened, but the smallest infraction on Q’s part could cost him everything.

“I told you I wouldn’t let that happen unless it was absolutely necessary,” Bond said at last.

“What is ‘absolutely necessary’? I don’t get a say in that at all, it’s you and M and everyone else in Q-Branch.”

“Well, what’s ‘absolutely necessary’ to you?” Bond asked.

“What would you have to do for you to ask someone to end your life?” Q asked, and this time Bond was stumped. He looked at his arm for a while in silence. His initial instinct had always been that he wanted to be taken out immediately if his arm acted up, but now he wasn’t so sure. If he could be saved, or stopped, he would want to. If he got hacked Q-Branch and MI6 would try to help him, he could get a better firewall installed, he could have the arm removed, he could, and likely would, try a lot of things before he asked someone to take him out and he understood that now. But Q didn’t have those options. If he was hacked he could be shut down against his will at any time. No one else besides Bond seemed to care that Q was just as human as they were.

“I don’t know,” was his answer.

“I don’t know either, but I don’t really have that option, do I?”

“No, you don’t,” Bond said, “but I can try and help with that. I can talk to M, try and get him to give you more freedom-”

“No, 007, this is a dangerous conversation for us to be having, and I don’t want M or anyone else to know I had it with you.”

Bond nodded to the camera a few times before standing up to get ready for bed. It was late and Bond wanted to stop this conversation where it was. He had gotten Q to admit how he was feeling, but he wasn’t sure that had been the right thing to do anymore. It had been his opinion that he knew Q’s mind, and he was finding out that he didn’t. He knew Q personally, but not what he was feeling, and that was likely the most human aspect of Q: He felt things internally that he didn’t always show. Still, Bond had agreed to not bring up this conversation with M, but he’d made no promises about not continuing to grant Q more freedom, something which he had every intention of actively pursuing.


	7. Chapter 7

Bond returned to Q-Branch the next day to return his equipment, including his PAI, but also to see Q. It was strange to Bond that he now had a face to put to the voice, having spent last evening now actually having something to imagine on the other end of his earpiece.

“Ah, 007, it’s good to see you again,” Q said in that way he did where Bond was never certain if he was being serious or not. Perhaps it was a little of both.

“You look busy,” he said, looking at all the growing number of computer systems surrounding the PAI.

“As much as usual,” Q replied, his eyes focused intently on one of the screens in front of him. “You looked bored. Is that why you’ve come to bother me?”

Bond laughed low and meandered around Q-Branch. Q smiled and his eyes trailed up from the screen to follow Bond around the room.

“Are you looking for something?” he asked eventually, having shaken his head to return back to work.

“Not in particular, just wasting time. I’m here because I’m bored, remember?”

There was nothing more bizarre to Bond that watching Q be able to roll his eyes. He wondered where he had learned to do that, since it couldn’t have been in his programming, and had a nagging feeling that the PAI had gotten it from him.

Other members of Q-Branch went to and fro in the office, or sat typing away at their computers. None paid too much attention to the agent interacting with the artificial Quartermaster. Just like before, no one paid too much attention to Q anyway.

“Does anyone ever talk to you down here?” Bond asked, making his way back to Q’s desk.

“They give me things to do,” he said. “But no, I suppose, no one _talks_ to me, per say. Not like you do.” Q had an expression on his face that Bond wasn’t going to try and understand, but it was somewhere between gladness and forlorn.

“Does that bother you?”

“Don’t start this again, 007,” Q said sharply.

“It’s just a question,” he said in a casual way. Q didn’t respond to that, just kept working on whatever it was MI6 had him doing. Bond couldn’t think of anything else to say so he absentmindedly adjusted his suit. The hospital still hadn’t called about the false-flesh surgery so he was still wearing the long jacket and single glove. As far as he could tell, no one besides himself and M knew about his augmented arm and he intended to keep it that way as long as possible, but he forgot where he was for just a second while adjusting his jacket sleeve and a flash of metal must have caught Q’s eye.

“Oh,” he said, his eyes no longer attached to the screen but staring at Bond’s arm. “Is that-”

“Shut it,” Bond said with bite as he quickly shrugged down the sleeve the small part of his arm that had been exposed was now properly covered.

“I didn’t mean to- I just didn’t know,” Q said softer, not moving his eyes from the sleeve on the agent’s arm. “Is that from the accident with the rental car?”

“Yes.” Bond didn’t want to talk about this. He hadn’t even wanted Q knowing about it, but that quick mistake on his part had ruined that completely.

“Is that… You’ve been so much more open with me recently, more trusting. Is that why? Did it change your perspective in some way?”

“I don’t trust my arm anymore that I trust anyone else’s augmentations,” Bond replied. “I didn’t have a choice in the matter, MI6 made the call to give it to me.”

“Oh. But the way you’ve been acting towards me-”

“You’re a special case, Q, I told you that.”

That seemed to be enough for Q for the moment, but his eyes kept going back to Bond’s arm, which frustrated and irritated the agent to no end. The silence between them went on for too long to be comfortable and Bond began to leave without any kind of farewell before Q broke the quiet.

“What do you mean when you say ‘special case’, 007?” he asked loud enough to hear, but gentle enough to not draw any attention to himself. “What am I to you?”

“A friend,” Bond said without thinking and before he could stop himself. Something akin to delight spread across Q’s face and Bond found he liked the way that looked to the Quartermaster.

“Friends,” Q echoed, tasting the word in his mouth. “I’ve never had one of those before. What does it entail?”

Bond had to laugh at that as he returned to the Q’s desk.

“It doesn’t entail anything, Q, it’s just something people are.”

“But there must be things you have to do. All relationships have certain requirements to them.”

“Is that what you’re programmed to know?” Bond said more than asked. “That’s a nice way to put it on paper, but that’s not how it works. We get along, we can hold a conversation with each other, we like one another’s company, that’s all friendship requires- What are you doing?”

While he was speaking Q’s eyes had glazed over for a second and the screens surrounding him had changed their images.

“I’m looking it up.”

“You’re looking up _friendship_? Unbelievable.”

“I just want to make sure we’re doing this right.”

“I am telling you there’s no way to do it wrong!”

“This is new to me, 007,” Q said. “PAI’s aren’t made to be anything but work items. We’re not even allowed to use the term co-workers with each other because we’re not. We just operate and that’s it.”

“Q,” Bond said, reaching out his hand to grab Q’s. Q stopped moving impossibly abruptly the instant Bond touched him. He stared blankly at Bond’s real hand touching his own, but didn’t move it away. Bond didn’t take his away either. “Am I not supposed to do this?”

“It doesn’t matter, I don’t think, just, no one really touches me, is all.” Q didn’t sound like himself for a moment, his words just barely putting together a sentence. Bond let his hand move away from Q’s slowly and Q flexed it the minute the pressure was gone. Bond knew that he could feel everything through his augmented arm, but he hadn’t thought about what Q could feel through his, but evidently he could feel just as well as Bond did. It had felt, for a moment, nice to feel Q’s hand under his own, but Bond tried not to dwell on it. It wasn’t real anyway.

“Friends are supposed to go places with one another,” Q said, moving the conversation back to the previous topic, though he was still fiddling with his right hand.

“We go on missions,” Bond replied.

“I suppose, but that’s work. The only time we ever really spend together is at work.”

“You came home with me some nights.”

“Yes, that’s true, but we haven’t actually _been_ anywhere together,” Q said, and Bond wasn’t sure where he was going with this. “Friends go to movies and café’s and to parks together. We don’t do any of those things.”

“Are you saying you want to go somewhere with me?” Bond asked, catching on. Q swayed where he stood.

“No. I’m just saying all of that sounds sort of nice. Nicer than meeting in an office or talking through an earpiece all the time.”

“You want to get out of here, don’t you?” Q nodded, just barely, and Bond wasn’t entirely sure how he felt about that. He had been the one encouraging Q to be open with him, but was it safe that Q wanted to leave Q-Branch, especially with Bond knowing that someone had used him to plan the attack in the rental car. Q seemed to pick up on the agent’s apathy.

“Forget I said that, it’s just something from the internet,” Q said and the screens changing back to what they looked like before. Bond had liked the look of pure joy that had been wrapped around Q’s face just seconds ago, but now he stood blank and upset and that just wasn’t working for Bond, so he made a choice and had to hope it was the right one.

“I can get you out of here,” he whispered across the desk, his face remaining casual and flippant as always. Q froze working for just a moment, then resumed, his face glued to the screens, but altered in expression.

“What are you suggesting?”

“No one is here late at night besides you anymore, right?” Bond said, remembering how empty the office was that morning he showed up.

“MI6 got rid of night-shift on Q-Branch since I arrived to do that work,” Q replied.

“So no one would notice if you left?”

Q tilted his head left and right, processing that.

“I suppose not.”

“Do you know how to safely disconnect yourself from these wires?” Bond asked, gesturing to the many cords connecting him to the desk.

“I’d have to have a qualified MI6 personal member to assist me. Only certain people have the clearance to detach them from me,” he explained.

“Could you get me that clearance?” Bond asked, then heard a soft dinging noise from one of Q’s computers.

“I just did,” he said, and he bit back a smile. This was happening. Bond smiled in return.

With that business handled the two of them were able to converse more freely while they waited for Q-Branch to clear out. A few double 0 agents made visits to collect or return equipment and made small talk with Bond, but no one addressed Q, even with prompting from Bond. Bond imagined they saw it like talking to a technologically advanced fridge: absurd and unnecessary.

As darkness filled the office, one by one, everyone started to clear out. No one asked Bond to leave, but then no one would have thought to. Q was there to speak with MI6 agents after dark when everyone left anyway.

“Alright, walk me through this,” Bond said when he was sure they were alone. Q stayed quiet for a moment before launching into instructions for Bond to follow. His voice shook ever so slightly as he spoke, but Bond knew he was nervous anyway. It was a prison break of sorts, but if this went wrong Q had a lot to lose. It took only a few minutes to get all the wires undone from Q’s body, but Bond saw why Q needed him. Certain fingerprints were required to undo each and every cord, and those fingerprints had to come from a human, so Q couldn’t do it himself. It was a secure safety measure, for sure, but it only added to Bond’s belief that Q was nothing more than a prisoner to Q-Branch and with each cord he undid he felt better about this decision.

Q felt around his body a bit once all the wires were removed. He looked wary about something going wrong or problems arising that he hadn’t accounted for, but nothing happened. So, at an uncanny slow speed, he moved away from the desk. Upon doing so his face changed from concern to general delight and he wandered freely around the room. Bond laughed, just a little, as he watched Q meander about the same way he had earlier that day, looking at everything and anything that he wasn’t able to see from his desk.

“You ready to go?” Bond asked when he felt Q had explored Q-Branch enough.

“Where are we going?” Q asked, no longer unsure of himself, but instead extremely excited.

“I was thinking just a walk around the city should do,” Bond said, nodding his head towards the door. Q nodded and the two walked side by side silently out of Q-Branch, and eventually out of MI6. No alarms sounded, no person tried to stop them, and nothing got in the way of Q greeting the outside for the first time.

His camera eyes looked over every inch of everything they passed on their journey away from MI6. It was dark out, but light from street lamps and stop lights was enough for Q to enjoy what he was seeing.

“It’s cold,” Q said, and that surprised Bond.

“You can feel that?” he said, taking a look up and down the PAI.

“Yes. It’s warmer in the office. I can see your breath!” he said, laughing as Bond exhaled a cloud of white smoke. He wasn’t sure why that was surprising to Q until he remembered that Q wouldn’t be able to see his own, since he didn’t have any. Artificial intelligence didn’t breathe, and Bond hadn’t noticed until right that second. The lack of a rising and falling chest was the only visual Bond had anymore that told him Q wasn’t human. The wires were gone, and with them was any indication that Q wasn’t like everyone, except that minor detail of breathing. It was such a small thing, but Bond couldn’t forget it. Q wasn’t a person, not really, though he acted enough like it to almost appear that way.

The path Bond chose to walk was the long way to his apartment. They passed nothing of great importance or renown, but all of it was intoxicating to Q, who kept telling Bond that he had only seen these things through traffic cameras or pictures online. He kept laughing and smiling and behaving in a way Bond had never seen before, but he was glad to now. He was happier than Bond had ever seen or heard him and he felt almost too proud that he was responsible for that feeling. Q bent down and touched the water of a lake for the first time and told Bond exactly what the cold felt like to him. He figured out how to jump and didn’t stop doing it for almost an hour. He passed a mirror in a window and stopped because he had never seen his reflection before. That was the highlight of Bond’s evening; watching Q turn and tilt to see what he looked like. He said he felt silly, but Bond told him he didn’t mind. He did the same all the time and he’d seen his face too many times in his life. They were out for several hours before they finally arrived at Bond’s apartment and the pair made their way inside.

Q explored the house a bit as well, but he had seen some of it from the computer and there really wasn’t much else to see. The furniture was limited, and the decorations were virtually non-existent. It was a place to sleep really, nothing else. But there was a sofa and scotch, so Bond poured himself some and sat down, Q following suite.

“What?” Bond said, as he drained the contents into his mouth, aware of Q’s eyes following his hand. “Is eating and drinking strange because you can’t do it?”

“No, I was just looking at your arm.”

“Ah,” Bond said, and nothing else, putting the glass down to look at his left hand. He still had the glove on it, but he knew what was underneath.

“Can I look at it?” Q asked, his head tilted slightly to the left.

“Why?”

“I’ve just never seen an augment before. I don’t know what the look like or behave like. I can give it an inspection if you want.”

“I don’t want anyone or anything in my arm,” Bond said with a snap, ignoring Q’s initial question.

“Augments aren’t really that bad, 007,” Q said, and Bond almost hated him for a second.

“You wouldn’t really know about it though, would you?”

“I told you, I know about the original Augment Hacks. All PAI’s were programmed-”

“To know about what happened, yes, but did you get everything? Or did you get the shortcut version of the story?” It wasn’t necessarily fair, but Bond was irritated that Q was acting like he fully understood the emotions behind something he hadn’t even been around to witness.

“Hackers got into the systems of AI robots and augmented humans and the result was massive amounts of destruction that only ended when the perpetrators were found and stronger firewalls were created.”

“Is that all you think happened?” Bond asked, staring directly at Q, who seemed beguiled by the turn in conversation. “Augments and AI destroyed property but the day was saved eventually and everything went back to normal?”

“Well… that is what happened.”

Bond sighed and poured himself another drink. He didn’t like talking about any of this, but whatever story Q had been told about the Augmentation Hacks was a shortened variation and if he was going to try and understand Bond’s feelings regarding the hacks then he deserved to know what really happened.

“The hackers targeted MI6 and other government positions first,” Bond started. “The positions in government were harder to get into because so few people in those roles had augments or used artificial intelligence, but in MI6 it was almost even how many people had and didn’t have augments. Our line of work is dangerous and the technology was available and any injury could be fixed as fast as we needed. The hackers started by forcing the augmented agents and workers to release MI6 secrets, but they were getting caught doing it left and right, so the hackers got violent.

“In one week augmented people in MI6 had gone from releasing secure files to taking out anyone who tried to stop them. By then it was happening all over the globe as copy-cats realized they could get into human systems and make them do anything, but we had also figured out that it was a hack and we trying to combat it. Q-Branch started working on virus protection and firewalls, but they couldn’t work fast enough. It took over three weeks to get everything under control and by then MI6’s un-augmented agents had been forced to put down every agent with any kind of augment. All of them. The hacked augmented agents took out a lot of other MI6 personal as well.

“So, no, everything didn’t go back to normal. All over the world people were dead or dying and the people who had been hacked had to adjust to living after what they’d done. The world changed, Q. Just because you weren’t around to see it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.”

The Quartermaster listened to all of this quietly and without interruption, absorbed in the story Bond was telling.

“But augments are better now. They’re protected from that sort of thing happening again, aren’t they?” Q asked finally. He sounded worried, which wasn’t the way Bond had expected him to react.

“If technology is changing so are hackers. Technology is never safe from people at their computers so long as people at their computers are the ones in charge of technology. If people can learn to code better protection, people can also learn how to hack it. It’s just the way of the world.”

“I won’t let something like that happen again,” Q said suddenly.

“What?”

“You said people on their computers building technology are the problem. Well, I’m technology building technology and I work in ways only machines understand. I’m the solution to your problem, 007, and I won’t let that happen to you, or anyone else.”

Bond mulled that over for a while, and while he didn’t fully believe Q was in possession of that amount of power or control, he appreciated the sentiment, and nodded in a pleasant sort of way.

“Alright, I trust you,” he said finally.

“No one is going to get to you, 007. Not if I can help it,” Q said. “Friends look out for each other.”

“What?”

“That’s what it said when I looked it up. Friends look out for each other. That’s what we are, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Bond replied with a half-smile, “we are. And it’s James, by the way. To my friends, that is.”

“James?” Q repeated.

“James,” Bond agreed and there was a mutual grin on both of their faces as they fell asleep on the couch.


	8. Chapter 8

It was unclear to Bond whether Q was actually able to get tired, but he was certainly run down from his and Bond’s walk through the city and had gone into sleep mode around the same time that Bond dozed off. When the sun rose enough to appear in Bond’s window he was first to wake, gazing for a moment at the Quartermaster as he recalled what had happened last night. He looked lifeless when he wasn’t fully operational. His body gave no indication that he was active at all, with no breath to signal life, given that he wasn’t actually alive. It was a bit maddening to Bond that he couldn’t decide on a term that described what Q was. He wasn’t alive, not really, but active and operation didn’t seem to fit the man who was lying before him. He was something in between; something there wasn’t a word for yet.

As Bond pondered this the sun rose higher and the dots suddenly connected.

“Q, wake up!” Bond shouted as he threw on his shoes. There was a moment of panic when Q didn’t show any signs of movement, but after a few second Q was able to load up, immediately aware of his surroundings.

“It’s morning!” Q cried, standing up as fast as he could.

“We have to get you back to Q-Branch!”

The pair screeched out of Bond’s door and down to the street where they hailed a taxi and clamoured in, Bond completely disregarding his own agreement to avoid public transportation. MI6 must have already been filling with people and by now someone had noticed that Q was missing. They hadn’t pulled the kill switch yet, but that didn’t mean they weren’t going to. Q’s anxiety was palpable, and Bond was just as worried. If something happened to Q it would be his fault.

The building finally came into view and Q and Bond were scrambling through the building. As they approached Q-Branch they saw a fairly large crowd surrounding Q’s desk.

“007, what is the meaning of this?” M called as the agent tried to calmly walk into the office. “We just about pulled the kill switch on Q.”

“I’m so sorry, I wanted-” Q started but Bond cut him off.

“I thought he needed more freedom and took him outside,” Bond said. He didn’t specify how long they had been gone for, not considering it information anyone needed to know.

“He is dangerous enough inside this building, he doesn’t need to start any issues outside of it,” a man called out from the crowd. Bond recognized him as the old Quartermaster, now downgraded obviously to some lower position in light of Q’s arrival.

“He’s not dangerous,” Bond retorted. “He’s as safe as the people in this office programmed him to be. If you have any concerns I would take them up with the rest of Q-Branch first.”

That was not the response Bond expected to give, and Q was surprised by it as well.

“Regardless,” the old Quartermaster said, apparently having nothing to say on that front, “he is meant to stay in the office. That is what he was built for!”

“He was built to be my Personal Artificial Intelligence to aid me on missions. His original purpose was built around leaving MI6!”

No one had a response for that either. It was true, after all. Not only was Q built for away missions, but for all intents and purposes he had left the office many times. The only difference now was that he had a body.

“He is still a prototype, and we don’t need anyone outside of MI6 knowing that we have some kind of sentient android waiting for them to hack into!” was what the man finally came up with to say. “You were there for the Augment Hacks, 007, you know the risks.”

“I know Q has the ability to feel and sense things at a near human level and that keeping something with those abilities chained to a desk could make him upset, and _that_ is more dangerous. He wanted to go outside, and I took him. He’s worked hard enough to earn that.”

“007, this is ridiculous! You yourself have been the leading force against augmentations in MI6, and now you want a robot with emotions parading around all of England?”

“I’m allowed to change my mind, sir, it’s what keeps me human,” he replied, suddenly taken by passion that resulted in him pulling off the glove on his left hand. There was a deeper silence over those watching the dispute as eyes fell to the agent’s obviously augmented hand. Q was as silent as the rest, listening intently to Bond’s impassioned defense of both their actions.

“Then I guess you’re a biased source now,” the old Quartermaster huffed, apparently ending the conversation with Bond to turn to M. “Sir, this PAI’s desire to leave MI6 is dangerous behavior and I’ve warned you about this before. I don’t believe he was the right choice for this program and I highly recommend shutting him down until we have the technology to prevent another PAI from getting to this level.”

M listened to all this carefully, but didn’t appear to agree with the old Quartermaster in any regard. Instead he drew his attention to Q and Bond.

“I disagree,” he said at last. “His human behavior is exactly why we gave him a body to begin with. He was chosen out of all the PAI’s as the most sentient, and those emotions come with the desire to not be attached to a desk. I believe 007 is right that Q left MI6 often when he was just a PAI and that a request for the same freedom is not a luxury but an expectation, though he shouldn’t have made any attempts to remove Q from the vicinity without consulting me first. Q is essentially a type of augment, and if agents with augments are trusted to leave MI6, then so should he. Still, I agree that it is dangerous to let Q go about on his own, for issues of security and the protection of his own well-being. 007, Q was you’re PAI and both know your way around each other fairly comfortably by this point. If Q wishes to leave this office at all you must be present with him for the full duration of his trip, wherever that may be.”

“Yes, sir,” Bond said immediately, not giving the old Quartermaster a chance to make any additional comments.

“I still expect you to complete all the work assigned to you, Q, which I suggest you get started on now,” M added as he began to leave, waving his hands to disperse the crowd back to work. Q nodded and returned to the desk, Bond following behind to help reattach the wires to Q’s body. The old Quartermaster, however, lingered, unhappy with the outcome of this conversation. Finally he sighed and wandered back to wherever his private office was in Q-Branch.

“He’s keen to get rid of you,” Bond said and he finished hooking Q up. Q was visibly shaken, but he nodded at Bond’s words.

“I did take his job from him, he’s allowed to be a little resentful,” Q replied. Bond wasn’t sure that was a fair assessment, but he was right. Q had taken his job, and pulling the plug on Q would likely reinstate him to that position. Still, that didn’t sit right with Bond, and he made a note to keep an eye out for him. He’d looked upset that he hadn’t gotten his way this time, and Bond couldn’t imagine he was going to give up on further attempts. Q was his responsibility now, and he intended to keep Q from harm in the same way Q had promised to protect him. That’s what friends did; they looked out for one another.


	9. Chapter 9

The mission’s Bond went on remained low profile, as the threat of another attack on him lingered, so Bond had more free time with which to spend in Q-Branch with the new Quartermaster. Q was more than delighted to have the company, even more so when the agent began taking him on regular trips outside of the building. He never took him out for too long, with Q still having more work to do than any of the human workers, but Bond found he actually enjoyed taking Q with him. He tried to stay low key at first, taking him only places where crowds were minimal, but he realized rather quickly that Q blended in exceptionally well with humans. There was nothing about him that would lead anyone to believe that he wasn’t like everyone else, from his appearance to his personality, so Bond started branching out. He started with a coffee shop, which was fascinating to Q. He liked the atmosphere, everyone working or talking. He called it a Production Hot Spot, which seemed a fair assessment of any coffee location.

As Q and Bond both got more comfortable going out of Q-Branch with each other Bond started letting Q pick locations. He immediately picked twelve different tech stores to check out and three libraries, all of which were fascinating only because of Q. He hacked into devices in the tech stores and ran scans on their history, finding hundreds of deleted photos of people who had taken selfies at the store, which was entertaining to say the least. Q was surprised when he entered the library to find how many books there were. He had expected some archives, and historical documentation, but he hadn’t been prepared for actual books. He didn’t understand why everyone didn’t read everything digitally, and Bond couldn’t explain it to him as well as he wanted to. There was just a feeling to doing things offline that Q wasn’t programmed to understand.

“It hasn’t rained once ever while on these outings,” Q said as the two meandered leisurely on a walk of indeterminate length. “That’s a statistical anomaly, considering the weather in this country.”

“I control the weather,” Bond said dryly, and Q laughed.

“What, it can never rain on James Bond?”

“I can handle the rain, it’s you I keep it dry for,” he said. He almost sounded like he was flirting. He did that a lot with Q, but he didn’t spend too much thought on the matter. He considered himself practicing for real life scenarios. He assumed Q didn’t and couldn’t understand anything of that nature anyway. He barely understood friendship.

“Oh,” Q replied. “But I’m waterproof. Water resistant actually. The rain won’t affect me.”

“It would ruin your afternoon though.”

That comment set Q of kilter. It wasn’t that he didn’t understand what Bond had said, just the reasoning behind it. He had become confused like that around Bond a lot recently.

“It _is_ a particularly nice day,” Q eventually decided upon saying. “You picked excellent weather for the day, I would say.” Bond scoffed, and Q smiled, and the moment felt nicer than the weather.

“James,” Q said after a momentary lapse in conversation.

“Q,” Bond replied, becoming increasingly glad that Q was getting comfortable using his first name instead of 007.

“Could you describe, as best you can, what love is?”

Bond stopped walking. This really wasn’t a conversation he expected, or wanted, to have.

“Why?”

“It’s confusing to me,” he said, which Bond didn’t believe was the whole truth of the matter.

“Why would it be any more confusing than any other emotion you feel?”

“It’s just… I can identify happiness, and sadness, and a range of other emotions,” he started, “but I don’t know what spurs love, so I don’t know what it feels like, or if I can even feel it. But that conclusion might just come from the fact that I don’t understand what love is.”

“Then I’m afraid you’re in the same spot as the rest of the world.”

“Oh?”

“No one actually knows what love is or how it works,” Bond sighed, “or even if it’s real. It’s something we’ve all agreed that nobody understands.”

“And where do you stand on the matter? That is, do you think it’s real?”

“Yes,” Bond said, feeling quite sure of that answer. “But I don’t think it’s so much a feeling as a _choice_ to feel something. You choose who makes you happiest and put more effort and time into that relationship. It has less to do with emotion and everything to do with agency.”

“Do you think I could feel it?”

“If you can, then maybe you will. If not, then who cares? It doesn’t matter too much in the scheme of things-”

Bond’s monologue was interrupted by the vibration of his cell phone.

“It’s the hospital,” Q said before Bond even answered, prompting a half-irritated look from the agent. “Sorry. Nasty habit.”

“If I wanted to use you as a caller ID, I’d ask,” Bon said as he stepped out of the way of the sidewalk to talk, bringing the phone to his ear. Q stayed where he was until Bond returned to his side.

“Nothing bad, I hope?” Q asked, and he sounded genuinely concerned.

“Nothing bad,” Bond dismissed. “They’ve restocked and called to schedule a time for my false-flesh surgery.”

“Another one?”

“No, I never got one the first time,” Bond said, pulling up his sleeve to show Q his augmented arm once again. “They were in short supply and asked me to wait until they got more in.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Q argued. “I went through your medical files after I found out about your augmented arm, to help while investigating the bombing, and it says you received a false-flesh surgery.”

“Then someone made a mistake. I didn’t have one yet, I’m just _scheduled_ for one.”

“I don’t make mistakes, James. The file clearly said-”

“Let’s go to the hospital to check. I want this sorted,” Bond said, irritation and annoyance starting to encompass him. There was something deeper though, an emotion of fear surrounding the idea that there were augmented parts of him that he didn’t know about – that he had been lied to about.

The hospital looked just the way Bond remembered it, white walls and floors that felt too clean, too unspoiled. The woman at the front desk smiled pleasantly, but Bond could see her smile wane, just slightly, when she noticed the grimace on Bond’s face.

There was a short kerfuffle as Bond requested his medical records and sorted out legal information, but before too long he had the information he needed in his hands.

And Q was right. He’d had one false-flesh surgery already. He was almost relieved to find that it was just to replace the damaged skin on his chest until he saw the augmentation section of the records. There were two items listed. An augmented arm, which Bond was acutely aware of, but there was also, directly after that, the words Augmented Heart.

There were many moments in Bond’s life, and the life of any MI6 agent, where the world went quiet and all you could hear was the thump of your heart. It was like that, in that moment, for Bond, the world slipping into silence as he focused and felt for the pounding in his chest. Of all the skills Bond had come to acquire over the years, recognizing his heartbeat was not one he thought he had, but as he listened and listened and listened he knew, instinctively, that the rhythm he felt was not the same.

Q let out a soft hum over Q’s shoulder as he read the report, but he didn’t sound surprised, which bothered Bond more that it should have at the moment. There was a clatter as Bond dropped the records back onto the desk before leaving without a good-bye or any further notice.

“James, what is it? It looks like the false-flesh was just used to repair you burnt skin, I thought you’d be pleased.”

“And what about my heart?”

“What about it?”

“It’s augmented!”

“Yes, that was in your file as well, an augmented limb and augmented organ. You’re actually very lucky to have gotten ahold of a replacement heart-”

“I don’t want one, Q, and even if I did I had a right to know about it!” Bond shouted.

“You didn’t know?”

“Do I look like I knew?”

Q shook his head rather slower than usual.

“But you’d be dead without it,” Q said. “So it’s a good thing, even if you didn’t know.”

“I’d rather had died,” Bond mumbled as he began to walk back towards MI6. He could feel it, the machine in his chest opening and closing, pumping blood through his system. He thought back to the Augment Hacks, he thought about how easy it would be to manipulate and control him with hackable arm and heart and likely a series of veins that connected to his new organ. He felt like a sitting duck, waiting to be taken advantage of, and Q wasn’t helping.

“Is it such an important thing?” Q asked, hurrying to keep up. “To have a heart. I don’t have one, after all.”

“I’m a person, Q, you’re just a thing. You don’t matter.”

If he had been in a better mood he might have apologized for saying that. If he’d been in really any other mood he wouldn’t have said it at all. But he did and he felt, in that moment, it was the right thing to say to the robot who was walking beside him. He wasn’t real, after all, and it didn’t matter if Bond hurt his feelings because those weren’t real either. Bond was real, even with a false heart and arm, and Q was just a voice, body or not.

Q didn’t say anything else on the walk back, but Bond could feel that he wanted to. He had to assume he either didn’t know what to say, or was afraid to upset Bond, either way the agent was happy to walk in silence for the whole of the journey.

“You can take yourself the rest of the way,” Bond said once they were just about outside of Q-Branch, then turned and walked away without waiting for any sort of reply. He caught a glimpse of Q’s forlorn face just as he turned and almost felt somewhat bad that he’d decided he was never coming back to see him again. He’d had quite enough of virtual reality, and enough of blurring the lines between what was real and what wasn’t.


	10. Chapter 10

A month passed and Bond managed to stay away from Q-Branch entirely. After dropping off Q he’d made a detour to M’s office where he used a lot of language that was unacceptable, but arguably deserved, and got himself temporarily taken off missions due to his obvious emotional limitations at the time. Bond resented that, and found not even going on the smaller, less important missions was beyond his capabilities of boredom. He might not have minded so much, though, if he’d had company. There was a time in Bond’s life when the silence of being alone was not only manageable but desirable. But he had been spoiled by his company with Q. They had talked on the earpiece, or through the computer, or just to each other when Bond brought him to his place once in a great while. He had to grow used to the quiet again, but he would never like it as much this time around.

To be quite clear, he wasn’t entirely sure why he didn’t go to Q-Branch to see Q. He knew he was upset with M for lying to him, though in fairness he had his reasons for not being wholly honest, and he was irritated with MI6 as a whole, but none of that was Q’s fault. It was more, he felt, the principle of the thing. Was his attention to Q just a result of how much of him was augmented? Everyone else in Q-Branch and MI6 treated Q like a robotic worker, which was what he was, but Bond treated him like a person and it was frightening Bond to believe that such behavior was a direct result of him being less human than everyone else around him. It made sense in his mind, so he felt it best to remove Q from his life. There had to be a separation of what was human and what was not, at least outside of his body since he couldn’t effect what was inside of it.

It was difficult though, to keep himself away from Q. He thought separating himself from him would snap him back, would put into perspective how unusual it is for a human to spend time with a PAI, but it didn’t. He wanted to talk to Q; to answer a million questions; to tell too many stories; to listen to him say things that only he and Bond would understand. He’d called Q his friend, which wasn’t a title he handed out freely, and he wasn’t altogether sure how to take it back. Yet alcohol still existed, and that was good enough for him most days and nights.

Exactly a month and a day since he’d been in Q-Branch Bond found himself finishing his last bottle of scotch when a panicked knocking came from the door.

“James!” someone from the other side called, and Bond knew that voice better than anyone else’s.

“Q?” Bond asked, pulling his gun out as he walked slowly towards the door.

“Yes, I need to talk to you!”

“You’re not supposed to leave Q-Branch without me,” he said, raising the gun to the door. He remembered how easy it was during the Augment Hacks for someone to get access to you. They were you’re friends, you let them in. Q wasn’t supposed to leave, and he knew that, and these circumstances were as suspicious as any could be.

“I know, I’m sorry, but this is important!” he shouted from the other end. “Someone’s trying to hack my system!”

“What?” Of all the things Bond expected Q to tell him, that wasn’t one of them, and he found himself pulling open the door regardless of what danger was outside it.

“Someone is trying to hack into me. I’m not letting them in, but they’re still trying anyway,” Q explained, and Bond noticed his eyes were blinking in a bizarre fashion and his hands were behaving in a weird way. Q seemed to notice Bond’s concerns “I’m keeping them out, but they’re still messing with my system. I’m going to be glitchy until they stop.”

“If someone’s hacking you, why did you come here?” Bond asked, not angry so much, but certainly confused. He was sure at this point that Q was telling the truth. He wasn’t there to harm Bond, and his system was being hacked but unsuccessfully. That didn’t seem like anything a PAI would be programmed to say to gain access to an agent’s house, since admitting to being hacked could get him shut down by anyone. But the issue remained that he still shouldn’t have left.

“Because I figured something out that I have to tell you,” he started. “After you told me about the original Augment Hacks and how it affected MI6 I went back and looked at the codes that had been used and noticed there was a pattern unique to the Q-Branch hacks that didn't occur in any of the other Augment Hacks elsewhere in MI6 and weren’t used by any of the people arrested for the hacks, which means the person responsible for the Q-Branch hacks was never caught. I didn’t notice it then and wouldn’t have at all, but the person trying to hack me right now is using the same pattern. Whoever is hacking me-”

“Hacked MI6 before,” Bond finished, putting together in his head what Q was telling him. “Can you get a location on where the hack is coming from?”

“I was coming from a moving vehicle but I lost track of it for a while. Let me try again,” Q said in a jagged voice. His left eye was now blinking at random while his right wasn’t as all, and his head had begun to twitch to the left intermittently.

“Shit,” Q said, and Bond almost laughed to hear him swear. He was sure he’d picked that up from him.

“Where’s it coming from?” Bond asked as he made sure his gun was loaded. If Q had a location, he had an off-the-books mission.

“Q-Branch.”

“Shit,” Bond said as he grabbed Q’s arm and led him down the stairs. “I guess it’s not such a bad thing you came here after all.”

“Where are we going?”

“Back to Q-Branch!” he said as they began the journey to MI6. A taxi was hailed partway through the walk and the driver was courteous enough to not ask about Q’s bizarre antics throughout the whole ride. Bond kept asking Q questions the whole time, not necessarily to make conversation, but to make sure Q was still there. He felt sure he would know instantly if Q had been hacked completely. He knew Q better than anyone, after all.

“Are they still there?” Bond asked as he and Q quietly sprinted towards Q-Branch. Bond held tightly onto Q’s arm to keep him from falling behind.

“Yes,” Q said with some effort. His skin was going from warm to hot as he used all his energy to keep the hacker at bay. “They’ve been trying to get a focus on my location since they arrived and noticed I wasn’t there. He’s trying to find me.  James, what if this is a trap?”

“I’ve been in a few of those before. Always managed to shoot my way out,” Bond said. He wanted to leave Q at his house, but he had to keep an eye on him in case anything happened, but he couldn’t let one of the original Augment Hack hackers continue about their life without being delivered justice. So Q had to come with him.

Q-Branch was dark and appeared empty except for a figure at Q’s desk, tapping away at the many computers before him furiously.

“Is this some sort of old Quartermaster versus new Quartermaster game to you?” Bond asked as he recognized the face before him. The older man didn’t seem surprised to see Bond in the least, and rather looked delighted.

“Q’s behavior is hard to nail down to a pattern, but in terms of hismore human nature I was just certain he had gone to see you. And I was right! Here you are,” he said, the light from the computers giving his face an iridescent glow. Bond made motions to move closer to the Quartermaster, but all of a sudden his augmented arm smacked the gun out of his right hand and gripped a pole to his left tight enough that his feet couldn’t move with enough strength to detach it. A panic washed over Bond, but a similar look fell over Q. The old Quartermaster had hacked into Bond’s augmentations.

“You look upset,” he said, continuing his work as if nothing was happening. “Don’t be. I’m not going to hurt you, not this time. I don’t care about you. All I need you to do take that inhuman thing apart for me.”

The old Quartermaster’s head nodded towards Q, who was still recovering from the attempted hack, though his body was beginning to settle down.

“So you can get your job back, I imagine,” Bond said, trying to keep his cool as he struggled to try and make his left arm move.

“I’ve worked here for years and suddenly your PAI starts acting funny and I’m out of a job. Not exactly fair, is it. Or ethical.”

“Why not just pull the kill switch?”

“Well, I wanted to,” he explained without looking up from his work. Bond wasn’t sure what he was doing until he felt his heartbeat becoming irregular. He was hacking into the rest of him. “I tried when he went missing that first time, but M wouldn’t allow it. And if I pull it without having a good reason they’ll just fire me, which doesn’t help me at all! So I thought I would get into his system to make him act up, but that wasn’t working. A man isn’t any match for a machine that can do its own coding. But when I found out my bomb had left you with augmentations, I knew I had a back-up plan!”

“Your bomb?” Q said, regaining some composure. Bond sighed. He felt stupider than he had in a while. They assumed it was about him, that the bomb was to get rid of an MI6 agent. They hadn’t thought for one second that it was a roundabout way to get rid of Q.

“But Q wasn’t even Quartermaster then,” Bond said.

“Oh, as soon as M told me about what you told him I knew he was going to be a problem,” he replied. “And I was right, as usual. I’ve tried for a long time to keep augmentations and artificial intelligence at bay to protect my career, and none of it’s worked.”

“Like the original MI6 Augment Hacks?” Bond spat.

“Those augmented artificial freaks are going to replace us all one day, if we’re not careful,” he warned as Bond’s hand released its grip from the wall, but he couldn’t move. The artificial veins that were connected to his hear were all working against him and he found himself frozen. “Excellent, I’m in!”

The old Quartermaster had now limited himself to one computer where he was managing all of Bond’s body, typing in a pattern that resulted in Bond taking a step forward. It wasn’t so much that his body was moving of its own accord, more that the veins in his legs were tugging forward, and wouldn’t stop until he took a step. It was painful, and unpleasant, and there wasn’t anything he could do about it but step closer to Q. Q, however, had changed locations since they arrived. While Bond was talking and the old Quartermaster was focused on getting into Bond’s system, Q had managed to get close enough to his desk to reconnect himself to the wires he was so often attached to.

Bond wasn’t sure what he was doing until he stopped moving and the old Quartermaster looked perplexed by that.

“How are-” he began as the screens around him changed before noticing Q connected to the desk. “I’ve never turned down a challenge, I suppose,” he said, then turned back to his screen. There was a struggle going on that Bond could quite literally feel as his body felt the effects of two people programming him to do different things at the same time. He felt his artificial veins, arm, and heart become completely out of control as Q tried to keep him stagnant while the old Quartermaster tried to make him move. In the end though, it seemed the old Quartermaster was winning.

“I thought a machine could code better than a human could,” Bond shouted to Q as he began walking towards him again. Q had taken a risk reattaching himself, as Bond could see that the old Quartermaster had repplied the locks to the wires so only a qualified agent could release him. He was trapped where he was with an ever approaching Bond on his way to pull him apart by hand, a frightening concept for both of them.

“I can only do so much because you never got any malware or firewall,” Q shouted, obviously struggling to talk and code at the same time. “You don’t have enough protection for me to do really anything.” He sounded worried. He had a right to be. He sounded upset. That was justified also. He told Bond before that being turned off made him feel like he was dead, but could he feel pain as well? He felt fear, for certain, but what was he afraid of exactly? Being shut down, or Bond being the one forced to do it.

Suddenly Q’s face snapped up.

“I can fix that,” he said, something the old Quartermaster obviously didn’t like to hear as his head swiveled to look at Q. “I can fix that!” he repeated as he pulled a cord out from one of the computers and began to tear at the false flesh on his chest.

“If you were just going to tear yourself apart we wouldn’t need to be here,” Bond said as he began walking normally towards Q, the PAI no longer fighting against the old Quartermaster’s hacking.

“This might hurt a bit,” Q said without actually responding to anything Bond said before he connected the cord to something in his chest then stabbed the other end directly into Bond’s heart. It didn’t hurt at all, as a matter of fact, as he felt everything slow down. His veins stopped working against him, and his arm fell limp.

“I’m syncing us. If we’re synced up I can share my protection, my firewall, everything” Q said and Bond could feel his body relaxing. It was like hot water through a strainer as he felt his own body rejecting the old Quartermaster’s intrusion. His body was his again. “Friends look out for each other.”

Bond smiled, and Q smiled back, and he was so lost in the moment that he almost – almost – missed the old Quartermaster coming up behind Q.

“Fuck off,” Bond said, and he meant it most assuredly, as he swung his augmented arm directly into the old man’s face. He clearly didn’t know how to take a punch and passed out almost immediately from the impact, which was a delight to watch from both Q and Bond’s standpoint.

“We have to let M know about this. Can you prove he was behind the original MI6 Augment Hacks?” Bond asked, and Q nodded but didn’t answer. “You alright?”

“I couldn’t keep him from getting to you,” he said. “I told you I would, and I didn’t. I should have done more before he had a chance, I knew how worried you were about it-”

“I told you not to give me any protection, remember? I should have listened to you before and let you upgrade me,” Bond said. Q shrugged as he reached out and unplugged the cord from both his and Bond’s chests.

“Is it weird that I still feel like I’m connected to you?” Bond asked, running his hand over the hole in his skin above his heart.

“No, I’m afraid we might be stuck like that. I synced us permanently so I’ll be alerted if anyone’s hacking you and vice versa. I’m sorry, I should have asked for your permission beforehand, but there wasn’t any time and I-”

Bond cut him off by closing the space between them. Maybe Q wasn’t one hundred percent real, but neither was Bond anymore. They were in this together anyway.

For someone who had never kissed anyone, Q was particularly good at it. They were roughly the same height, so that worked well for both of them, but he figured out what to do with his hands and how to tilt his head much faster than Bond had been anticipating. He might have researched it, but he was good regardless. Even still, he could feel Q was holding back.

“Sorry,” Bond said when he pulled back. “I’m no good at asking permission either.”

“No, no it’s not that!” Q started. “That was nice- I just… I’m just a thing, remember. I don’t matter.”

Bond sighed and shifted his jaw.

“I say a lot of stupid things, Q. I wouldn’t read too much into most of what I say, that in particular.”

“Oh?”

“I didn’t mean any of that. You’re not a thing, and you do matter, even if it’s just to me,” he said, and Q’s face got softer. He looked happy, genuinely happy, and Bond loved seeing him like that.

“If I’m not a thing, then what exactly am I?”

“You’re Q, and you’re special.”

“You love to use that word, don’t you?”

“Just for you,” Bond said, and Q laughed before giving a soft kick to the old Quartermaster.

“Bastard,” he muttered, and this time Bond laughed before placing a soft kiss on the side of the other man’s soft brown hair. He thought he should have felt strange, felt odd, felt wrong in some way, but it didn’t. The lines between was a real and what wasn’t weren’t actually blurred so much as nonexistent. Real is concept, not a thing, and Bond could define it on his own. Q was real to him, as real as he was to Q, and they needed each other in a strange sort of way. Q swayed where he stood in a small sort of way, letting Bond’s arm slide around his shoulders. He felt, or knew rather, that they were both thinking back to that moment when Bond’s hand touched Q’s for the first time. It was one of the few times in Bond’s life where his memory was jogged to a pleasant time, and he found he liked it better than almost anything else in the world.

“This isn’t friendship anymore, is it?” Q asked, his hand joining Bond’s in absently tracing the hole in Bond’s chest.

“Not anymore, no.”

“Then is it love?” he asked, like it was an easy question with an easy answer. Bond let out a short laugh.

“It’s not that simple, Q.”

“Why not?” he said, looking up so he was staring directly into Bond’s eyes. “You said love is a choice. Something you decide on – _Someone_ you decide on. And I’m choosing you.”

“Alright then,” Bond said, taking Q’s artificial hand into his own augmented one, “let’s start from there.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading this this story! I had a wonderful time writing it and just being a part of this again! I hope like what you saw and continue to read the rest of the 00Q Reverse Big Bang collection! May we meet again


End file.
